[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

is where Iraq's assassin is going to finish you off."
"Him and what Republican Guard?" Rerno grunted.
They had come to the end of the road. Buried deep beneath the mountains was a
complex of offices and labs. Metal catwalks surrounded the man-made cavern. It
looked like a James Bond set on a Roger Corman budget.
"This is it," Rebecca said, stopping the Jeep. They had gone through the same
drill in a half-dozen countries. Rebecca would drop him off to be attacked by
the latest assassin, then swing by to pick him up later.
This time as Remo got out of the vehicle something felt different. Rebecca
didn't seem right.
Probably not her. More than likely it was Remo. His senses were still
recovering. And then it was there. Her dazzling smile. Plastered across her
beautiful face.
"Good luck," she said.
Blaming everything on the strange disorientation he was still feeling, Remo
shut the door of the Jeep. "See you in a few," he said.
Rebecca nodded tightly. Without a word she turned the Jeep around and headed
back up the long road. Alone in the subterranean chamber, Remo shook his head
once more. "Thanks a lot, guys," he muttered.
Turning, he headed deeper into the complex. As he walked, he slowly began to
extend his senses. It was like flexing sore muscles. He had spent so much time
Page 104
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
focusing around the spirits of men who weren't there that everything was out
of whack. Still, he could feel his body adjusting.
It took another minute for his senses to return to normal. Once they did, he
frowned.
"What the hell?" Remo grumbled.
There were no life signs. The cavern was a few hundred yards around. Except
for the road in, he couldn't detect any other tunnels or chambers. It was
small enough that he should have been able to sense an enemy. But there wasn't
so much as a single heartbeat in the entire underground complex.
"I'm warning you," he called, "if there's a smelly Russian monk floating
around down here, this time I'm harvesting eyeballs."
With great disappointment he suddenly remembered he'd left his eyeball-poking
stick on Rebecca Dalton's plane.
"Crap," complained Remo Williams.
And in response there came a loud animal roar. The sound came from the
direction of the tunnel. For an instant Remo thought Iraq had sent a herd of
stampeding elephants to kill him. He wondered briefly if elephants were legal
to use as tools of assassination in the Sinanju Time of Succession.
And then the choking dust cloud rolled in along with the growing, terrible
roar, and Remo realized that it wasn't a herd of elephants after all, but an
explosion so massive that it rocked the ground beneath his feet.
And in the same instant Remo realized who Iraq's hired assassin probably was,
but it was too late to do anything about it because the roaring dust cloud was
upon him.
OUTSIDE THE COLLAPSED entrance to the tunnel, Rebecca Dalton neatly tucked the
tiny silver antenna back inside her cell phone. It had taken just a
three-digit number and the pound key to set off the explosives buried in the
rock above the tunnel. The shafts in which the bombs had been placed were
drilled down from the mountain above so that there was no evidence of them
inside. Men trained in Sinanju had amazing abilities of perception. She hadn't
wanted to take the risk of drilling up from the inside.
Marveling at the technology available to assassins in this modern age, Rebecca
tossed the phone into the big pocket of her beige desert jacket and drove over
to a small shed that sat away from the palace. There was no one inside.
Rebecca sat down before a computer monitor. An old-fashioned microphone that
looked as if it had been scavenged from Walter Winchell's attic sat beside
it.
The keyboard and screen commands were in Arabic. That didn't matter to Rebecca
Dalton. Like the pro that she was, Rebecca began typing swiftly at the
keyboard. At the far end of snaking tendrils of wire, unseen locks popped
open.
On the monitor a dozen red warnings flashed. That was all there was to it.
Brushing a little desert grime from one leg of her pants, Rebecca reached for
the microphone. While there was still time to talk to the man she had just
murdered.
ELECTRIC FANS successfully removed most of the dust from the air. They whirred
for a few minutes before a second pair of explosions-these much smaller than
the one that had sealed the tunnel-brought them to a spluttering stop.
A gasoline-fueled generator continued to chug in the distance, feeding power [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]